Artwash

Mel Evans

Description

*Shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Prize, 2016*



*Shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize, 2015*



* Shortlisted for the Academy of British Cover Design Awards, 2015*



Artwash is an intervention into the unsavoury role of the Big Oil company's sponsorship of the arts in Britain. Based on the high profile campaign 'Liberate Tate', Mel Evans targets Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell's collaboration with institutions such as the Tate in an attempt to end the poisonous relationship forever.



Based on years of undercover research, grassroots investigation and activism as well as performance and cultural interventions, Mel Evans draws together the story of the campaign and its journey which has gone from strength to strength. Artwash shows how corporate sponsorship of the arts erases unsightly environmental destruction and obscures the strategies of oil company PR executives who rely on cultural philanthropy.



The conclusion sounds a note of hope: major institutions (such as the Southbank Centre) have already agreed to cut sponsorship, and tribunals are happening which are taking these relationships to task. Artists and employees are developing new methods of work which publicly confront the oil companies. Like the anti-tobacco campaign before it, this will be an important cultural and political turn for years to come.

List of Illustrations and Tables

List of Acronyms

List of Characters

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction

2. Big Oil’s Artwash Epidemic

3. Capital and Culture

4. Discrete Logos, Big Spills

5. The Impact of BP on Tate: An Unhappy Context for Art

6. Opposition to Oil Sponsorship and Interventions in Gallery Spaces

7. Conclusion

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Royaume-Uni
• British Museum
• BP (entreprise)
• ART
• General
• Great Britain
• Ecology
• United Kingdom
• General officer
• Museology
• Sociology
• Gulf of Mexico oil spill
• Reino Unido
• Museo Británico
• Museum Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 avril 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783713332
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Artwash
Artwash
Big Oil and the Arts
Mel Evans
First published 2015 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Mel Evans 2015
The right of Mel Evans to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN  978 0 7453 3589 6  Hardback
ISBN  978 0 7453 3588 9  Paperback
ISBN  978 1 7837 1332 5    PDF eBook
ISBN  978 1 7837 1334 9    Kindle eBook
ISBN  978 1 7837 1333 2    EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Text design by Melanie Patrick Simultaneously printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
For Rachel Singer, my mum, who taught me change is a process, not an event; and for her mother and grandmother, Mickey and Beth, who, in their purchasing, kept an arm’s-length relationship with any company that invested heavily in advertising .
Contents
List of Illustrations and Tables
List of Acronyms
List of Characters
Acknowledgements
1.
Introduction
2.
Big Oil’s Artwash Epidemic
Tobacco and arms manufacturers: ethics and sponsorship
Oil sponsorship of the arts around the world
The international oil economy and the BP Ensemble in London
3.
Capital and Culture
Art at arm’s-length from the state, but ethics under its thumb
Where the money really comes from
Ethics and accountability
4.
Discrete Logos, Big Spills
Disaster is fundamental to business
A social licence to operate
Arts sponsorship to secure social licence
Fake it ’til you make it: simulating authenticity
5.
The Impact of BP on Tate: An Unhappy Context for Art
Curating with BP in the picture
Art in social context
BP, Tate and the post-colonial
6.
Opposition to Oil Sponsorship and Interventions in Gallery Spaces
Performing protest in gallery spaces – a growing global movement
Institutional critique and the sponsor
Making space for change: the ‘deviant art institution’ and interstitial distance
7.
Conclusion
Merely artwash
Signs of change
Notes
Index
List of Illustrations and Tables
Figures
1.1
Toni & Bobbi , Liberate Tate, June 2010, Tate Britain. Film stills. Video credit: Gavin Grindon, 2010
1.2
Licence to Spill , Liberate Tate, June 2010, Tate Britain. Photo credit: Immo Klink, 2010
1.3
Carbon Dioxide Concentration ©Simon Lewis, 2014
2.1
‘BP Walk through British Art’ – BP sponsorship in Tate Britain. Photo credit: Martin LeSanto-Smith, 2013
3.1
Tate operating income year-on-year 1990–2014 (millions)
4.1
BP flag at Tate Britain. Photo credit: Richard Houguez, 2012
5.1
BP flag at Tate Britain. Photo credit: Mel Evans, 2014
5.2
Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around , Chris Drury, University of Wyoming Art Museum. Photo credit: Chris Drury, 2011
6.1
Human Cost , Liberate Tate, April 2011, Tate Britain. Photo credit: Amy Scaife, 2011
6.2
The Gift , Liberate Tate, July 2012, Tate Modern. Photo credit: Martin LeSanto-Smith, 2012
6.3
Hidden Figures , Liberate Tate, September 2014, Tate Britain. Photo credit: Martin LeSanto-Smith, 2014
6.4
All Rise , Liberate Tate, April 2013, Tate Modern. Photo credit: Mel Evans, 2013
6.5
Parts Per Million , Liberate Tate, December 2013, Tate Britain. Photo credit: Martin LeSanto-Smith, 2013 15
6.6
‘Viking Flash-horde’, Reclaim Shakespeare Company, June 2014, British Museum. Photo credit: Hugh Warwick, 2014  
Tables
3.1
Tate income 1953–2014
3.2
Tate income 1990–2014
List of Acronyms
A&B – Arts and Business (lobby group)
ACE – Arts Council England
APOC/AIOC/BP – Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later Anglo- Iranian Oil Company, later British Petroleum, now BP
Ash – Action on Smoking and Health
CAPP – Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
CEMA – Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts
CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility
DCMS – Department of Culture, Media and Sport
GDP – gross domestic product
G.U.L.F. – Global Ultra Luxury Faction
MoMA – Museum of Modern Art (usually, New York)
MOSOP – Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People
NGO – non-governmental organisation
NDPB – non-departmental public body
PR – public relations
ppm – parts per million (usually of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere)
SLO – Social Licence to Operate
List of Characters
Leeora Black – founder and Managing Director, Australian Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility
Iwona Blazwick – Director, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2001–
Pierre Bourdieu – cultural theorist
George Brandis – Arts Minister, Australia, 2013–
John Browne – chairperson, Tate Board of Trustees 2007–; CEO of BP 1998–2007
Anna Cutler – Director of Learning, Tate, 2010–
Andrea Fraser – performance artist and theorist
Christopher Frayling – chairperson, Arts Council England, 2005–2009
Viv Golding – senior lecturer in Museum Studies, University of Leicester, UK
Hans Haacke – artist and theorist
Tom Henderson – Director for External Affairs, Shell Plc.
Jude Kelly – Artistic Director, Southbank Centre, London, 2005–
Jennie Lee – Minister for the Arts, UK, 1964–1970
Peter Mather – Honorary Director, Royal Opera House; BP Group Regional Vice President for Europe, 2010–
Emma Mahony – lecturer in Visual Culture, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Éire
Maria Miller – Culture Secretary, UK, 2012–2014
Grayson Perry – artist
Nicholas Serota – Director, Tate, 1988–
Margaret Thatcher – British prime minister, 1979–1990
Colin Tweedy – Chief Executive, Arts & Business, 1983–2012
John Williams – co-founder, Fishburn Hedges (public relations firm)
Chin-tao Wu – assistant Research Fellow, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
Acknowledgements
Artwash was born in 2012 when I attended a course at Tate led by curator Michaela Ross titled ‘Inside Today’s Museum’. I wanted to look into the reasons Tate was reluctant to drop BP from the perspective of each and every department. So I approach oil sponsorship both from the inside and the outside: as a visitor, a Tate member, as an artist and maker of performance interventions, and also as part of a community of objectors that includes staff, members, artists, academics and activists from around the world; and as a curious, critical outsider. I also attended a course led by curator Martine Rouleau at Tate, ‘What’s in a space?’, and thank her for all the thinking that inspired. Many thanks to curator and academic Emma Mahony at the Dublin National College of Art and Design, whose writing and presentations on Liberate Tate have been enormously instructive.
I draw significantly on the work of the academic Chin-tao Wu, who also approaches the art museum from both within and without, as both a researcher and emigrant. A research fellow at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, Wu’s influential text Privatising Culture – which has been translated into Turkish, Portuguese and Spanish – started life as a doctoral dissertation at University College London and her research grew out of journeys between galleries in the USA and the UK. Wu describes her investigative interest as founded in an appreciation, then concern, for public access to the arts as she saw it increasingly under threat during her time living in London over two decades from the late 1980s. Therefore, I ground my questions in the very thing that is important to critics and supporters alike: the arts, and the valuable role of the arts in society. From that shared starting point I will consider what is at stake for the arts when oil sponsorship enters the scene. My concerns around oil sponsorship of the arts share a similar duality: I have worked in the arts for over a decade, starting in theatre, and have been involved in environmental activism for the same period in parallel.
Artwash was nurtured into fruition by the arts, activism and the education organisation Platform, where I spent six years researching, writing and developing creative projects on oil, finance and arts sponsorship. I am forever thankful for the ambitious and dedicated world of Platform: Ben Amunwa, Anna Galkina, Tanya Hawkes, Emma Hughes, Farzana Khan, Sarah Legge, Adam Ma’anit, James Marriott, Mika Minio-Paluello, Greg Muttitt, Mark Roberts, Kevin Smith, Sarah Shoraka and Jane Trowell, among others in various eras; and trustees Rosa Curling, Glen Fendley, Charlie Kronick, Diana Morant and Charlotte Leonard. And thanks to the endlessly creative people of Liberate Tate – both past and present. Both groups embody many of the wonderful qualities I hope to find in all creative collaborations for social change. And, thanks to all the others in the Art Not Oil network: at BP Out of Opera, Reclaim Shakespeare Company, Rising Tide London, Science Unstained, UK Tar Sands Network and Shell Out Sounds. A few people deserve extra special mention: Kevin Smith, who I have had the sheer luxury to collaborate with so closely for a good number of years and hopefully a long time yet, and Hannah Davey and Hayley Newman, whose creative minds I admire and wavelengths I share. And the third organisation that of course bore Artwash into being is Pluto: thank you to you all for giving the project life and constructive feedback, especially David Castle, my editor, and Alison Alexanian, Emily Orford, Thérèse Wassily Saba, David Shulman and Robert Webb.
The best place to write in is the next one. Thank you to all those who gave this project space physically, whose homes or presence I have benefitted from as spaces to write in: Sophie Allain and Simon